Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein wrote the disapproving memo that President Trump used as a pretext to fire FBI Director James Comey in May. But on at least one area of law-enforcement policy, Rosenstein and Comey remain on the same page—the Deputy AG set out earlier this month to revive the outgoing FBI director's efforts to limit encryption and other digital security technologies. In doing so, Rosenstein has drawn upon nearly a quarter century of the FBI's anti-encryption tradition. But it's a bad tradition.Like many career prosecutors, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is pretty sure he's more committed to upholding the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law than most of the rest of us are. This was the thrust of Rosenstein's recent October 10 remarks on encryption, delivered to an audience of midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy.The most troubling aspect of Rosenstein's speech was his insistence that, while the government's purposes in defeating encryption are inherently noble, the motives of companies that provide routine encryption and other digital-security tools (the way Apple, Google and other successful companies now do) are inherently selfish and greedy.At the same time, Rosenstein said those who disagree with him on encryption policy as a matter of principle—based on decades of grappling with the public-policy implications of using strong encryption versus weak encryption or no encryption—are "advocates of absolute privacy." (We all know that absolutism isn't good, right?)In his address, Rosenstein implied that federal prosecutors are devoted to the U.S. Constitution in the same way that Naval Academy students are:

Back in February you might recall that a little something called competition forced Verizon Wireless to bring back unlimited data plans it had spent the last few years insisting nobody really wanted. But the plans nobody wanted or needed wound up being so immensely popular, they caused some very modest slowdowns on the Verizon network. As a result, Verizon announced last August that it was getting rid of its truly unlimited plan, and replacing it with a series of even worse "unlimited" plans that throttled every video touching the Verizon network. For good measure, Verizon proceeded to ban 4K video streaming entirely.Fast forward a few months, and Verizon has now introduced a new "solution" to the company's own caveats. Starting on November 3, Verizon will be graciously allowing you to pay them an additional $10 per month to lift these arbitrary and artificial restrictions:

There is nothing more dangerous than a government without a sense of humor. This is true for a myriad of reasons, but chief among them must be that a government unable to incorporate humor into its ethos is all the more likely to attempt to outlaw forms of humor held dear by the general public. To see an example of this in action, we can look to Australia and its strange battle against Juice Media, makers of the series Honest Government Adverts, such as the one they did on Australia.Those of you who haven't been hit in the head with a hammer recently likely noticed that the Australian shield on display on that clearly satirical video is slightly off in that it doesn't spell "Australian" correctly. Hammer attacks or not, if that was the only clue you had that this video is pure and brilliant satire, you need immediate help from healthcare professionals. And, yet, despite all of that, the National Symbols Officer of Australia, which is apparently a real thing, has begun banging its drums over the various laws it claims using that satirical symbol violates. Via the EFF post:

Rozcomnadzor has been featured in our pages often as of late. The Russian agency tasked with censoring the internet for any number of reasons including copyright, discussions about illicit behavior, and supposed security risks from anonymous speech, has actually proven itself to be far better at sweeping up innocent sites in its efforts in the kind of collateral damage normally reserved for cluster bombs. This was always going to be the case with a censorship operation such as this, with the only real question being whether it would be corruption or ineptitude that would take center stage.Thus far, ineptitude has been the order of the day. But that seems to be changing, with several people at the top of Rozcomnadzor coming under investigation for what would amount to fairly blatant corruption.

It probably goes without saying that while improving in spots, American broadband isn't much to write home about. Americans pay more money for slower service and worse customer support than a long list of developed countries. Some of that's thanks to geography, but more of it's due to a lack of competition. That lack of competition is, by proxy, thanks to our refusal to address the stranglehold these giant companies have over our federal and state regulators and lawmakers. Instead of fixing this problem, current regulators seem more interested in weakening deployment definitions to help industry pretend the problem doesn't exist.In a growing number of towns and cities, residents have increasingly pushed to either build their own broadband networks, or strike public/private partnerships to help improve service quality and availability. Instead of trying to make these efforts irrelevant by offering better service at lower rates, incumbent ISPs have focused on paying often clueless lawmakers to help pass protectionist bills restricting what locals can and can't do with their own local infrastructure and taxpayer dollars. More than twenty states have now passed laws to this effect quite literally written by ISP lobbyists.Both San Francisco and Seattle have considered building their own broadband networks in a quest to end this duopoly logjam. In Seattle, Mayoral Candidate Cary Moon is promising to build a citywide fiber network if elected, something lobbying spending indicates is making regional ISPs Comcast and CenturyLink nervous. And in San Francisco, the city is now promising to build the biggest municipal broadband network yet, with a new report (pdf) indicating the cost to connect every home and business in the city would be somewhere around $1.9 billion.Unlike some projects where the city owns both the network and the service provided on top, San Francisco's model would be open access -- meaning any ISP -- small or large -- would be invited in to compete:

For many years now, we've pointed out that whenever people -- generally legacy content companies and politicians -- started pushing for internet platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter to "police" content, that no matter what those platforms did, it was never going to be enough. For example, after years of resisting, Google finally caved to the demands of the MPAA and the RIAA and started using DMCA notices as a signal for its ranking mechanism. This was the first time that Google ever allowed outside actors to directly have some level of control in how Google ranked them in organic search. And in doing so, we feared two things would happen: (1) it would just encourage others to start demanding similar powers over Google and (2) even those to whom Google caved would complain that the company wasn't doing enough. Indeed, that's exactly what happened.With that in mind, it was great to see UK lawyer Graham Smith (of the excellent Cyberleagle blog, where he regularly opines on issues related to attempts to regulate internet platforms) recently come up with a simple set of rules for how this works, which he dubbed the Three Laws of Internet Intermediaries (might need some marketing polish on the name...).

For as long as Techdirt has existed, we've highlighted how most implementations of electronic voting simply aren't safe or secure. The Diebold disaster in 2006, Sequoia's security scandal in 2008, and a rotating flood of similar stories since, have driven this point home time, and time, and time again. And despite these warnings neither the companies that make these machines, nor the election commissions or local governments tasked with overseeing them, have done enough (or, in many cases, much of anything) to ensure that our Democratic process is secure.The latest example of just how not under control this problem is comes out of Georgia, where reports indicate that somebody managed to completely wipe a server integral to a lawsuit against Georgia election officials. The lawsuit, filed by a coalition of election reform advocates, is attempting to force Georgia to retire antiquated and heavily-criticized election technology that has been under fire in the media since June, after security researchers indicated that the touch-screen machines could be easily tampered with without leaving much of a trace:

I know that the cynical among you already assume -- falsely -- that the surveillance state ignores all rules and spies willy nilly on everyone. That is not true. However, they do have a long and scary history of "reinterpreting" or stretching the definitions of things to do widespread surveillance in ways that clearly violate the letter and spirit of the law, even as they try to justify it. For many years now, we've written about concerns with Executive Order 12333 -- a Reagan-signed Executive Order that enabled much greater surveillance oversees. In the summer of 2014, State Department whistleblower Stephen Napier Tye revealed that everyone focusing on other programs -- such as Section 215 under the PATRIOT Act or Section 702 under the FISA Amendments Act -- were missing the point: nearly everything was being done under EO 12333, and those other programs were just used to fill in the gaps. Here's what he said at the time:

Pay what you want for the Linux Lifetime Mastery Bundle and you'll get access to the Fundamentals of Operating Systems course. Over six hours, you’ll discuss the various functions of operating systems and the interrelationships of those functions. Plus, you’ll receive a companion textbook to get more detailed info whenever you need it. If you beat the average price of the bundle ($7.38 at the time of writing), you unlock three more courses. In the Introduction to Programming and Coding for Everyone with JavaScript course, you'll gain a solid foundation in the world’s most popular computer language, JavaScript. The Linux V7 Essentials course will teach you the basics of Linux V7 using Red Hat Linux, preparing you to sit for the Certified System Administrator exam given by Red Hat. Finally in the Linux V7 System Administration course, you will learn how to install Linux V7, handle system initialization, work with disk partitions, and manage packages, users and groups. Plus, you’ll dive into more advanced concepts like the Linux kernel, the X Windows system, and learn to troubleshoot.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

The new director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, has apparently decided to take up James Comey's anti-encryption fight. He's been mostly quiet on the issue since assuming the position, but the DOJ's recent calls for "responsible encryption" has emboldened the new FBI boss to speak up on the subject.And speak up he has. Although the FBI still hasn't released the text of his remarks to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, more than a few sites are reporting it was the usual "go team law enforcement" boosterism, but with the added zest of phone encryption complaints.

We've long noted how one of the sleazier telecom industry lobbying tactics involves paying minority, diversity, or other groups to parrot policies that actually undermine their constituents, but provide the illusion of public support for shitty positions. Like when the cable industry paid Jesse Jackson to claim that trying to bring competition to the cable box was akin to racism in the 1960's American South. Or when AT&T paid the The Hispanic Institute to support the company's planned acquisition of T-Mobile, ignoring that the deal would have killed tens of thousands of jobs, while driving up wireless rates for all Americans.Because there appears to be zero public repercussion for this grotesque tactic, it has continued to be highly effective -- and has been of great use to AT&T, Verizon and Comcast as they attempt to gut net neutrality rules. While this sort of group co-opting is always in bad taste, the Intercept noticed that the Verizon-funded National Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce decided to take things to the next level this week. In an editorial over at The Hill, executive director Justin V&‌eacute;lez-Hagan claimed killing net neutrality would aid storm-stricken Puerto Rico:

Techdirt has been writing about the (slow but steady) rise of open access for a decade. That's as long as the Annual International Open Access Week has been running. Cambridge University came up with quite a striking way to join in the celebrations:

For years we've written about the idiocy of the DMCA's 1201 triennial review. If you don't recall, Section 1201 of the DMCA is the "anti-circumvention" part of the law, saying that anything that gets around DRM is, itself, copyright infringement. This was so obviously stupid and counterproductive when it passed, and Congress knew it was so obviously stupid and counterproductive, that it included an even stupider "safety valve" to deal with the obviously bad results of the law. That safety valve, known as the "triennial review" is that every three years, people need to beg and plead with the Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress to make explicit exemptions from the law, where circumventing DRM won't be considered infringing. Over the years, this lengthy and costly process has at least allowed certain key exemptions for security and academic research. Though, of course, even when exemptions are granted, it's often a hot mess.But, astoundingly, the exemptions only last until the following triennial review, meaning that every few years, everyone has to waste their time and go through the whole damn process again. This blew up in everyone's face in 2012 when the Librarian of Congress rejected an exemption for phone unlocking that had been in place for the previous round. Lots of people got angry, and even the White House weighed in to say it was a mistake that should be fixed. Of course, rather than fixing Section 1201, they just passed a separate law specific to phone unblocking.However, the whole issue got so much attention and so much interest (both from the public and politicians) that I'd be surprised if the Copyright Office ever decided to drop an exemption after it had been issued. And, indeed in the newly released notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on the latest exemptions, the Copyright Office easily renews all of the old exemptions:

It seems like barely enough time has passed for the filing fee check to clear, but Twitter-alternative Gab's lawsuit against Google has already been dropped. (h/t SophisticatedJaneDoe)The dismissal [PDF] -- only the second item on the docket -- is as brief as the complaint (which alleged anti-trust violations by Google) was long.

Like many people today, I have a decent amount of experience using Facebook's language translations. With Geigners the world over, including an eyebrow-raising number of them in South America, I've found the translations to be a useful if imperfect way for me to interact with distant family members that reside in countries and continents far from the States. Imperfect is a key word there, however, as some of the garbled nonsense that results from translations can range from somewhat funny to downright perplexing. It goes without saying that relying on a website's translation alone to interpret someone writing in a different language is a harrowing experience fraught with error.Or maybe I should say that all of that should go without saying, because it seems that Israeli police relied solely on Facebook's translation services to lead them to arresting a Palestinian man who appeared to simply try to be congenial.

Yesterday we broke the crazy story of how the DOJ issued a subpoena to Twitter attempting to identify five Twitter users, not because of anything they had done, but because someone else the DOJ disliked -- a security researcher named Justin Shafer -- had tweeted an emoji at them in response to a discussion about a different case. You can read all the details in that original post, in case you missed it yesterday. There was so much craziness in that story that I didn't even get to cover all of it. Some of those named in the subpoena have posted their thoughts -- including Ken "Popehat" White and Keith Lee. I suggest reading both, as the subpoena directed at each of them was particularly silly, given that both freely make their identities public. The DOJ didn't seem to do even the slightest research into the accounts it was demanding info on, or it would have known just how easy it was to "unmask" White and Lee.As for the other three Twitter accountholders -- all of them are anonymous. But the DOJ certainly has zero legal basis for unmasking them. As we've discussed repeatedly in the past, anonymous speech is also protected by the First Amendment, and there's a very high bar for law enforcement to get past to unmask anonymous speakers. EFF's Kurt Opsahl pointed to a concise statement on this in a recent ruling in the Awtry v. Glassdoor case, which Lee also reposts in his blog:

The last two posts I wrote about SESTA discussed how, if it passes, it will result in collateral damage to the important speech interests Section 230 is intended to protect. This post discusses how it will also result in collateral damage to the important interests that SESTA itself is intended to protect: those of vulnerable sex workers.Concerns about how SESTA would affect them are not new: several anti-trafficking advocacy groups and experts have already spoken out about how SESTA, far from ameliorating the risk of sexual exploitation, will only exacerbate the risk of it in no small part because it disables one of the best tools for fighting it: the Internet platforms themselves:

An emergency radio is an absolute must have for any emergency situation, especially in the event of a natural disaster. This handy lightweight Emergency Multi-Function Radio And Flashlight will catch the NOAA weather broadcast 24 hours/day, and is self-sufficient if it needs to be, drawing power from solar panels or a built-in hand crank so you'll never have to worry about it running out of power. It includes an LED flashlight and an on board battery as well to help you charge your other devices. It is on sale for $19 for a limited time.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

We've made this point over and over again: if you give people the power to force down someone else's content, it will be abused. We see this most clearly in things like DMCA takedown notices, which are rife with abuse -- either through automated takedowns or just by people who want certain things to disappear. But here's a variation we haven't seen quite as much: DMCA abuse as extortion. This story involves musician/composer Keitaro Ujile who variously goes by Ujico* and Snail's House and who has a pretty big following. As an aside, he describes his electronic music as "Happy Music" and, damn, is it ever. I've been listening to it while writing this post, and you can too at Soundcloud, Bandcamp or... YouTube.It's that last one that this story is focused on. Because a few of his songs on YouTube currently look something like this right now:Yup, so someone named Lazy Channel is claiming infringement on three Ujile videos. "Lazy Channel," whoever that is, has his own YouTube page, and it appears to have a bunch of Vietnamese songs on it. It doesn't have many followers (350 subscribers). I'm not linking to it, because no need to give that guy any extra attention, because here's the rather incredible message that "Lazy Channel" sent to Ujile soon after his videos got taken down:If you somehow can't read that, it says:

It appears public pressure -- coming in the form of lawsuits and gag order challenges -- has finally had an effect on the DOJ. Ellen Nakashima is reporting the Justice Department will no longer attach indefinite gag orders to routine requests for data and communications.

Earlier this year the GOP and Trump administration rushed to kill consumer broadband privacy rules. While the broadband industry cried like a colicky toddler when the rules were originally proposed, they were relatively modest -- simply requiring that ISPs clearly disclose what they're selling, who they're selling it to, and provide working opt out tools. The rules were proposed after ISPs repeatedly showed they were incapable of self-regulating on this front (see Verizon's zombie cookies, AT&T's attempts to charge you more for privacy, and CableOne's declaration it wanted to use credit scores to provide even worse customer support).As a direct result of the GOP and Trump administrations attack on consumer privacy rules, more than a dozen states began proposing their own privacy rules to try and close the gap. While there's a real threat of these state laws being downright bad and/or inconsistent, that's probably something ISP lobbyists should have thought about before killing the FCC's modest and more uniform rules. You might recall that the EFF threw its support behind California's privacy law (AB 307, pdf), noting that it was solid enough to provide a template to other states for some uniformity on the consumer privacy protection front.But thanks to some immense, cross-industry lobbying pressure, that proposal was killed back in Septmeber. In a new blog post, the EFF details precisely how Google and Facebook (under the blanket proxy of the Internet Association) joined forces with their historical nemeses in the broadband industry, using a rotating crop of outright lies to vilify the proposal:

The results of another police camera study are in and there's not much good news in them. While cautiously hailed as tools of accountability, body worn cameras so far have proven to be anything but. In the early days of body camera adoption, a study of a pilot program in Rialto, California produced very positive results.

Net neutrality is the idea that Internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all data that travels over their networks fairly, without improper discrimination in favor of particular apps, sites or services. It's a principle that's faced many threats over the years from ISPs and government agencies seeking to exercise control over the free and open Internet.With the roll back of net neutrality protections looming, many people are now asking, "What if there is no net neutrality?"This "what-if" debate is surprising, however, because we have a clear, documented history of the kinds of non-neutral, discriminatory practices that ISPs have actually deployed in recent years. Here are just a few ways ISPs have throttled or blocked content in the past:

As smartphones and other mobile devices have gotten smarter and smarter, they've taken over more and more of most people's general computing needs, and the importance of the classic personal computer has waned. And so for some time the question has been: will the PC ever go away entirely? That's our topic this week as we try to figure out who really needs a PC these days, and when and if that will change.Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes or Google Play, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

As promised, Ron Wyden (along with Rand Paul) has delivered an antidote to the Senate Intelligence Committee's completely terrible Section 702 "reform" bill. That bill, authored by Sen. Burr, would extend the NSA's 702 powers until 2025 while allowing US law enforcement to use collected intelligence for normal law enforcement purposes. It also would have turned the NSA's "about" collection back on, provided no one opposed it with directly-targeted legislation. This program's ability to "inadvertently" sweep up US persons' communications was so concerning the NSA voluntarily shut it off. (It asked to have it turned back on less than two months later, however.)Charlie Savage of the New York Times has published the latest draft of the Wyden reform bill, titled the USA RIGHTS Act of 2017. (His annotated version of the bill can be found here.) Wyden's bill [PDF] makes several significant changes, including codification of the NSA's voluntary "about" collection shut down.Beyond preventing the NSA from resuming a collection it has abused since inception, the bill also shortens the extension period to 2021, ensuring the next debate over Section 702 collections isn't put off for nearly a decade. (The Burr bill extended the sunset to 2025. The House Subcommittee's lukewarm reform bill set it at 2023.)It also would attempt to close the "backdoor search" loophole that allows US government agencies to obtain domestic communications without a warrant. Wyden's bill adds a warrant requirement for these searches -- including those with a national security purpose. This serves two purposes. First, it brings the collection of domestic communications via NSA surveillance back in line with the Fourth Amendment. Additionally, it provides for better accountability by ensuring any database searches leave a paper trail. It also bans the acquisition of content "known to be entirely domestic."The bill also provides for better notification of prosecutors' use of Section 702-derived evidence. It limits the use of Section 702 surveillance to national security cases, with one exception: direct approval from the Attorney General. The new notification requirements will attempt to circumvent parallel construction by preventing the government from withholding notification if there is any other conceivable way it could have obtained the same evidence (inevitable discovery, normal law enforcement surveillance methods, etc.).It also adds further reporting requirements, including mandatory production of numbers Wyden has been seeking for years: incidentally-collected US persons' communications. It would also require the FBI to turn over the number of US persons queries it performs using NSA-collected intel.There are other good aspects to the bill -- stuff normally not discussed during surveillance authority sunsetting. The bill would divest the power currently held by Chief Justice John Roberts. Chief justices have controlled FISA court judge selection for most of the last 30 years, resulting in a long stream of conservative picks, many of them former government prosecutors. This bill would allow all 13 circuits to nominate judges for FISC posts, which should help prevent future FISA judge picks from being so closely aligned with the Chief Justice's views.Finally, the bill also provides for additional Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board input. The PCLOB is all but dead, but if it's revived, it would have access to Intelligence Community whistleblower complaints.This is the best reform bill we've seen offered yet. But the clock continues to tick down to 702's renewal. Chances are, Sen. Burr's control of the Senate Intelligence Committee isn't going to do much to ensure this bill moves forward intact, if it moves forward at all. Between Burr and Sen. Feinstein, the oversight committee has been internally limited in terms of actual oversight. Wyden's presence on the committee is the wild card, but entrenched powers continue to limit his effectiveness. Hopefully, some of this bill will replace the worthless, toothless "reforms" proposed by Sen. Burr and continue to nudge the Intelligence Community towards compliance with a number of Constitutional amendments.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has released its Section 702 reauthorization bill [PDF]. Rather than fix anything, it makes pretty much everything worse. This is largely due to Sen. Burr's influence, who probably felt he had to bring something to the debate, but couldn't bear to part completely with his "clean, forever reauthorization" dreams.Senator Burr is somehow claiming this is a "reform" bill. Marcy Wheeler has written an excellent post describing all the ways in which it isn't, especially the tail end of the bill which pretends to limit US law enforcement access to NSA collections.

Scared to look at your email sometimes? You won't be with Postbox 5. This power email app lets you access all your accounts in one place with an extremely functional, intuitive interface that lets you organize and access everything you need within a few keystrokes or clicks. Packed with features to allow you to compose messages faster, send and find attachments more easily, and clean up your inbox clutter. This single user license is on sale for $29.99.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

So, here's a fun one. Back in May, the Justice Department -- apparently lacking anything better to do with its time -- sent a subpoena to Twitter, demanding a whole bunch of information on a five Twitter users, including a few names that regular Techdirt readers may be familiar with:If you can't see that, it's a subpoena asking for information on the following five Twitter users: @dawg8u ("Mike Honcho"), @abtnatural ("Virgil"), @Popehat (Ken White), @associatesmind (Keith Lee) and @PogoWasRight (Dissent Doe). I'm pretty sure we've talked about three of those five in previous Techdirt posts. Either way, they're folks who are quite active in legal/privacy issues on Twitter.And what info does the DOJ want on them? Well, basically everything:

As the Supreme Court readies itself for an important Fourth Amendment decision, the supporting briefs are beginning to trickle in. At stake is a potential redefining of the expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment, something that was diminished by the 1979 Supreme Court decision that created the so-called Third Party Doctrine.In Carpenter's case, the third party records in question are something gathered by all cell phone companies: location data. The government used months of cell site location data to retrace Carpenter's movements, all without a warrant. This warrantless access turns cell phones into proxy tracking devices for the government. The government is perfectly fine with this turn of events and is asking the Supreme Court to uphold the lower court's decision.A brief [PDF] siding with the government has been submitted by George Washington University law prof (and Volokh Conspirator) Orin Kerr. In it, Kerr makes some strange arguments.The least weird argument is Kerr's assertion cell site location records shouldn't be covered by the Fourth Amendment because they are the equivalent of "observation in a public space." This is undoubtedly true, but it does allow the government to perform these "observations" without actually having to use its own eyeballs. Instead of tracking someone's movement through direct, in-person surveillance, the government can serve a subpoena to phone companies and use constantly-collected data to perform retrospective tracking.Kerr goes on to serve up an analogy to buttress his assertion the Fourth Amendment should provide no protection for ostensibly "public" activities. And that's where the arguments start going off the rails.

Last week we noted how Freshman Michigan Representative Michele Hoitenga has been pushing a broadband competition-killing bill she clearly neither wrote nor understands. The industry-backed bill, HB 5099 (pdf), would ban Michigan towns and cities from using taxpayer funds to build or operate community broadband networks, and would hamstring these communities' abilities to strike public/private partnerships. The bill is just the latest example of broadband industry protectionist laws ISPs ghost write, then shovel unobstructed through the corrupt state legislative process.ISPs want to have their cake and to eat it too; they don't want to upgrade or deploy broadband into rural or lower income areas, but they don't want others to either. Why? Because these communities might highlight how there's creative, collaborative alternatives to the duopoly status quo we all despise. And they certainly don't want added outside pressure disrupting the good thing (read: duopoly regulatory capture resulting in no competition and higher rates) they've enjoyed for the better part of a generation.While companies like AT&T could deter towns and cities from looking for creative alternatives by offering better, cheaper service, it's much less expensive to throw money at lawmakers who, with the help of groups like ALEC, craft and pass laws protecting their regional mono/duopolies. All while pretending that their only real motivation is to protect the taxpayer, of course.And while this process has played out in dozens of states repeatedly over the last fifteen years (more than twenty states have let ISPs write similar state laws), Hoitenga's lack of experience provided a closer look at the often-grotesque process. As we noted last week, Hoitenga doesn't appear to even remotely understand how the broadband industry works, from her belief that Michigan residents had 37 different ISPs to choose from, to her argument that letting giant ISPs dictate what locals can do in their own communities somehow...helps the little guy.As the press began to politely highlight how Hoitenga should probably actually understand the industry she's legislating and the bill she's supporting, the lawmaker refused to comment -- and instead chose to flee Twitter:

The last time we checked in with Long Trail Brewing, the Vermont brewery was busy fighting a Minnesota brewer that had dared to put a stick figure of a hiker on its beer can. It seems that rather than basing its trademark legal expeditions on any real or potential customer confusion, Long Trail views trademark law as a vehicle for monopoly and lawsuit-driven income. Long Trail is certainly not alone in this view, unfortunately, but it does have a penchant for taking this sort of thing to ridiculous lengths.Such as going after an apparel company for a simple t-shirt using an incredibly generic phrase, for instance. Long Trail has initiated a trademark lawsuit with a company called Chowdaheadz because the latter dared to make a shirt with the phrase "Take a hike" on it. As the filing explains, Long Trail has trademarked the phrase for its use and has sold apparel with the phrase on it.

It came as something of a shock to learn recently that several hugely-popular security protocols for Wi-Fi, including WPA (Wireless Protected Access) and WPA2, were vulnerable to a key re-installation attack (pdf). A useful introduction from the EFF puts things in context, while more technical details can be found on the krackattacks.com site, and in a great post by Matthew Green. As well as the obvious security implications, there's another angle to the Krack incident that Techdirt readers may find of note. It turns out that one important reason why what is a fairly simple flaw was not spotted earlier is that the main documentation was not easily accessible. As Wired explains:

Last month, we wrote about the crazy situation in Spain, where the government was so totally freaked out about a Catalonian referendum on independence that it shut down the operators of the .cat domain, arrested the company's head of IT for "sedition" and basically shut down a ton of websites about the referendum. The Washington Post now has an article with even more details about the digital attacks in both directions around the Catalonian independence referendum, including hack attacks and DDoS attacks. But one thing caught my eye. Apparently, the supporters of the referendum had created an app called "On Votar 1-Oct." The app had a bunch of the expected functions:

Consumer groups believe that the FCC is planning to formally unveil its unpopular plan to gut net neutrality the day before Thanksgiving, apparently in the hopes of burying media backlash in the hustle and bustle of holiday preparation. At that time, the FCC is expected to not only unveil the core text of their Orwell-inspired "Restore Internet Freedom" proposal, but schedule a formal date for the inevitable, final vote to kill the rules.While announcing bad news right before a holiday works in some instances, net neutrality has been such a hot-button topic for so long, the ploy isn't likely to soften criticism of Trump or the FCC in the slightest. These fairly modest consumer protections have broad, bipartisan support, since our collective disdain for uncompetitive giants like Comcast tends to bridge even the starkest partisan divide. Eliminating these rules is, by any measure, little more than a brazen gift to one of the least competitive and least popular industries in America, and anybody telling you otherwise is either financially conflicted or misinformed.Consumer groups like Fight for the Future seem to believe they can garner enough support in Congress to try and thwart the FCC's looming vote:

We talk quite a bit about the problem of so-called SLAPP lawsuits around here. SLAPP standing for "Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation." It's a terrible acronym, but what it really means is generally the rich and powerful filing bogus lawsuits against the less powerful for the purpose of harassing and silencing them. That is, even if the plaintiffs recognize that they will lose, it's worth it to them to file the lawsuit anyway, because the process itself can be so destructive to the defendants. This is why anti-SLAPP laws are so powerful, allowing defendants to both get rid of such lawsuits quickly and to get back legal fees, thus minimizing at least some of the damage of SLAPP suits. Now, there are some lawyers who seem to be specializing in filing SLAPP-style lawsuits. One law firm that appears to be building up such a reputation happens to be President Donald Trump's personal law firm, Kasowitz Benson Torres. We've discussed how its founding and managing partner, Marc Kasowitz, had threatened to sue the NY Times over its reporting on women claiming Trump had touched them inappropriately -- a threat he failed to follow through on within the statute of limitations in New York.However, others at Kasowitz's firm appear to be targeting the environmental movement with SLAPP suits, starting with Greenpeace. And, they've added a funky little twist to the traditional SLAPP suit -- the RICO SLAPP. Back in May of 2016, a company named Resolute Forest Products, represented by Kasowitz partner Michael Bowe, filed a massive (124 page) lawsuit against Greenpeace and a few others, claiming that Greenpeace is a fraud. Literally. Here's how the lawsuit opens:

Whether you fly a lot, work in a noisy office, or just enjoy precious silence, these Paww WaveSound 3 Headphones will give you a listening experience free from distractions. Combining a state-of-the-art CSR chipset with multiple microphones, the WaveSound 3s block out as much as 20dB of unwanted ambient noise, independent of ANC function, making them an especially great option for air travel. They also features, two 40mm Neodymium drivers to create a balanced sound, and a built-in microphone that lets you make or receive calls when connected to your phone. The headphones fold up easily into the included case for increased durability. They are on sale for $80.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

We've been a bit perplexed about how much momentum SESTA has. As explained, it's a bill that is called the "Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act" but it has many serious problems that could impact just about any online service, even if they have no idea that they're being used to support sex trafficking. Also, there's some aspect of moral panic to all of this, as the actual statistics suggest that the size of the sex trafficking problem is not nearly as big as many politicians and organizations claim. That's not to say it's not a problem -- because clearly it is a problem, and an important one. But it does suggest that broad-brush solutions with massive consequences to the entire internet should be reviewed a bit more carefully.Indeed, as we've suggested, the way SESTA is currently structured, there appears to be a high likelihood that it would make the sex trafficking problem worse, by making it prohibitively risky for internet platforms to seek out and report to the authorities evidence of trafficking on their platforms. This is why a whole bunch of experts and organizations focused on stopping sex trafficking have all spoken out against SESTA, saying it's the wrong solution. Freedom Network USA, which works to reduce trafficking around the US made this point clearly:

Amid an uptick in stories about courts issuing restraining orders that amount to prior restraint on speech, it's worth remembering that prior restraint is generally viewed as plainly unconstitutional except if it is applied narrowly and for dire reasons such as national security concerns. Despite that, prior restraint has come up quite a bit as of late, in cases ranging from trademark disputes between comic conventions to mattress review sites to anti-abortion activism. These expansions of prior restraint should concern anyone interested in free speech, of course, but it takes a special kind of judge to not only issue a prior restraint order against a news organization, but to admit it and say he doesn't care.Michigan's WXYZ Channel 7 news team were contacted by Mila Kapusta and several other families asking that attention be paid to issues in the probate guardianship system. These families were frustrated with outcomes and procedures in the probate court as family's battle over custody of loved ones amid family disputes. Kapusta, for instance, had sought guardianship over her parents, which is currently held by Kapusta's sisters, Sandy and Lorrie. As part of its reporting on the story, WXYZ was going to include photos of the parents, Janet and Milan Kapp, provided by Mila Kapusta.That is, until a judge stepped in and issued a restraining order preventing the footage from airing.

A ruling has been handed down by a federal judge finding the government's demands for fingerprints from multiple residents of a house does not implicate the Fifth Amendment. [h/t Brad Heath]The underlying case -- still under seal -- bears some resemblance to one we discussed here about a year ago. Law enforcement sought a search warrant for a residence, which would allegedly house devices containing child pornography. The devices were suspected to be Apple products, which can be opened with fingerprints. The warrant asked for permission to compel the residents to supply their fingerprints -- both to unlock the devices and to ascribe possession to the person whose fingerprint unlocked them.Surprisingly, the magistrate judge rejected the government's request. The government appealed the magistrate's rejection, kicking it up a level in the federal court system. The court notes in its ruling [PDF] its reviews of magistrates' decisions isn't normally adversarial, but this case raises some questions in need of additional viewpoints.

Sorry for the late post, everyone! A glitch crept into our admin system and I was unable to access the leaderboards for most of the day. But now, without further delay, our top comments of the week...First place on the insightful side is a simple, no-nonsense response from Mononymous Tim to a fired cop's complaints about public release of his body camera footage turning people against him:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2012, we saw more copyright nonsense as South Park was sued over a character design and textbook publisher Pearson managed to take down 15-million student and teacher blogs with a single DMCA notice — but of course, being punished for a bad DMCA notice was and is almost impossible. As we approached the 30-year anniversary of the CD, we lamented the lack of music industry innovation, while the numbers continued to show that file sharers are also big media buyers. And Harvey Weinstein made an appearance on Techdirt — over an unhinged rant about piracy.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2007 things weren't much different, though perhaps even sillier, with one law firm trying to use copyright to claim you can't look at its website's source code, a bunch of media companies claiming it's infringement to skip commercials, Congress pushing for anti-P2P laws with claims that P2P promotes identity theft, and the RIAA launching its lawsuit against Usenet.com. Amidst all this, YouTube made a major announcement and ContentID was born.Fifteen Years AgoAnd guess what? More of the same this week in 2002 — but it was a week when more people were noticing the problems. Some were (rightly) worrying about the future of expanding DRM, and talking about copyright law as the new prohibition and a tool that lets corporations destroy America's cultural heritage, and asking if we really want to put the dinosaurs in charge of evolution. Copyright defenders were hitting back weakly, with arguments amounting to "trust me" and "shut up, Gary Shapiro, we don't like you".

The NYPD is actively opposed to transparency. It does all it can to thwart outsiders from accessing any info about the department's inner workings. This has led to numerous lawsuits from public records requesters. It has also led to a long-running lawsuit featuring the Bronx Defenders, which has been trying to gain access to civil forfeiture documents for years.The NYPD has repeatedly claimed it simply cannot provide the records the Bronx Defenders (as well as other records requesters) have requested. Not because it doesn't want to, even though it surely doesn't. But because it can't.The department has spent $25 million on a forfeiture tracking system that can't even do the one thing it's supposed to do: track forfeitures. The Property and Evidence Tracking System (PETS) is apparently so complex and so badly constructed, the NYPD can't compile the records being sought.Oddly enough, the Bronx Defenders has pieced together enough data from the NYPD's broken PETS (along with other public records) to at least point out the glaring discrepancy between what the department publicly claims it has in its forfeiture accounts and what the database says it does.

If you've followed our series of posts about Denuvo, the DRM once claimed to be the end of video game piracy, you may have thought we had reached the end of its saga a couple of weeks ago when Denuvo-"protected" title Total War: Warhammer 2 was cracked and defeated within a day of its release. After all, once a game has been cracked in a time increment that can be measured in hours, you likely thought that was the finish line of Denuvo's lifespan.You were wrong. In the past week or so, multiple games that used Denuvo have been cracked on the same day as their release, with most of them being AAA titles from big publishers.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about a hellishly sketchy plan by a drug company, Allergan, to avoid the process as known as "Inter Partes Review" of its weak patents. In the weeks since that post a bunch has happened, but before we catch you up, a refresher is important. One of the biggest problems of the patent system for years has been the US Patent Office's willingness to grant terrible patents. This is only partially the Patent Office's own fault -- as some of it is just the nature of how our patent system is designed. As it is, patent examiners have limited time to review patents, and all of the incentives are to approve them, rather than reject them (a rejection can be endlessly appealed, granting gets it off the examiner's plate and improves the "productivity" of the office). On top of that, there's no adversarial process -- an examiner only gets info on why the patent should be granted, and not reasons it shouldn't. In an age where unscrupulous patent attorneys push to patent absolutely everything and many view patents as a lottery ticket, you have a situation where an overwhelmed Patent Office is approving a ton of bad patents, and letting the courts deal with it down the road.That, of course, has been a disaster for actual innovators who don't have time and money to waste in court fighting bogus patent lawsuits. In the last round of patent reform, the America Invents Act, in 2010, a small, but smart, change was added to the system: the IPR setup. The idea was that it was a way to get a tribunal at the patent office to take another look -- by creating the adversarial process that is lacking from the original patent review process. This enables third parties to raise issues about the patent to the tribunal -- called the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) -- and lets the PTAB review whether the patent should have been granted in the first place. Many patent system supporters hate the whole IPR thing, because they don't like the fact that their bad patents can be more easily invalidated. It certainly cuts off one part of the patent troll shakedown game. The Supreme Court is currently considering a case right now to throw out the PTAB as unconstitutional, while Congress has been kicking around ideas to kill it as well.In the meantime, though, some lawyers have come up with a truly sneaky, and truly awful "work around" that they've basically now productized. After a decision by the PTAB earlier this year to refuse to even hear an IPR request involving a patent held by the University of Florida after the University (a part of the state of Florida) argued "sovereign immunity", lawyers realized that anyone could get out of the IPR process if they just "sold" their patent to a government entity who could claim sovereign immunity. From there is was only a few logical leaps to realize that Native American nations could claim such sovereign immunity. Hence, the deal to "sell" Allergan's patents to the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe.Basically everyone recognizes this is a sham sale. The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe has no interest in this patent. Or the other patents its now "buying." It just gets some cash, which the original patent holder finds worth paying because it helps them avoid the IPR process. Everything gets "licensed" back to the original patent holder anyway, so the actual transaction is quite clear: patent holders paying Native American tribes solely to avoid a review by the patent office of their sketchy patents.When the Allergan deal became public, lots of people grew concerned. It seemed like such a naked attempt to game the system. The House Oversight Committee began investigating the issue, noting its serious concerns with what was happening.On top of that, the issue flowed into the case involving the patents in question. Remember: the IPR process is handled at a special tribunal at the patent office. But there can still be lawsuits going on in parallel, and that's what was happening with Allergan in its patent fight against Teva Phramaceuticals (who is challenging the validity of Allergan's patents). The case still goes on no matter what happens with the IPR process, but Teva raised the issue of whether or not the Mohawk tribe now needed to become a plaintiff in the case too. After a pretty quick back and forth of papers flying in the court, the judge has, in fact, added the tribe as a plaintiff to the case, while issuing an order that raises serious concerns about this practice of laundering the patents through a Native American tribe to avoid IPR. While the court doesn't directly claim that the transfer is invalid, it certainly suggests the court does not look kindly on the practice:

For years we've noted how if you want to really understand the dysfunction at the heart of the U.S. broadband industry, you should take a closer look at West Virginia. Like most states, West Virginia's state legislature is so awash in ISP campaign contributions it literally lets incumbent ISPs write state law, only amplifying the existing lack of broadband competition in the state. So when the state received $126.3 million in broadband stimulus funds, it's not particularly surprising that a report by the US Commerce Department's Office of Inspector General (pdf) found more than a few examples of fraud and waste.More specifically, Frontier was accused of buying and storing miles of unused fiber to drive up costs, as well as the use of various "loading" and "invoice processing" fees to milk taxpayers for an additional $5 million. The report's findings come on the heels of previous reports that found Frontier and the state used taxpayer money on unused, overpowered routers and overpaid, redundant, and seemingly purposeless consultants. As is often the case with regulatory capture, efforts to hold anybody accountable for any of this have so far gone nowhere.But after the Inspector General's report, the federal government decided it might be a good idea to at least ask for some of this misspent money back from Frontier and the State. According to the Charleston Gazette Mail, of particular interest were these additional "loading" surcharges, and the fact Frontier stockpiled 49 miles of unused fiber to drive up build costs:

Think we're unduly worried about how "trafficking" charges will get used to punish legitimate online speech? We're not.A few weeks ago a Mississippi mom posted an obviously joking tweet offering to sell her three-year old for $12.

Maximize your peace of mind on the road with this Hi-Res DashCam. Simply turn it on when you're driving, and it'll record footage of the road on a continuous loop. It offers up to 2 hours of recording time with an 8GB microSD card, and can take still shots as well. It automatically records when your car suddenly jerks or shakes, even if the device is turned off. The dashcam is on sale for $25.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

A lawsuit filed against President Trump alleges a host of First Amendment violations stemming from Trump's Twitter blocklist. According to the suit filed by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, an official government account shouldn't be allowed to block users from reading tweets. Sure, there's an actual official presidential Twitter account, but nothing of interest happens there. Everything from retweets of questionable GIFs to arguable threats of nuclear war happen at Donald Trump's personal account. But everything's all mixed together because the president insists on using his personal account (and its blocklist) to communicate a majority of his thoughts and opinions.The government's lawyers are now forced to defend the president (and his blocklist) from these allegations. It's not an easy job. In fact, as Alison Frankel reports, it requires a significant amount of cognitive dissonance.First, the government has argued the Twitter account President Trump uses most is not a publicly-owned (read: government) Twitter account.

For the better part of a decade we've noted how if America really wanted to improve its horrible broadband problem it would stop letting industry giants like Comcast write shitty protectionist state telecom law. Over the last fifteen years, more than twenty states have passed laws preventing towns and cities from building their own broadband networks even when no incumbent broadband provider will. In many instances these bills also hamstring public/private partnerships, which are often the only way to creatively bring better broadband to under-served or unserved areas of the country.Michigan is the latest to highlight this problem. Freshman Representative Michele Hoitenga this month introduced HB 5099, a bill that would make it difficult if not impossible for local towns and cities to build their own broadband networks. The bill would ban towns and cities from using taxpayer funds to improve local telecom infrastructure. According to the Institute for Local Reliance, an organization that fights these protectionist measures and helps municipalities improve broadband coverage, the bill would also deter towns and cities from striking public/private partnerships with the likes of Google Fiber:

The Trump Administration is continuing its war on leakers. It's probably meant to keep whistleblowers at bay as well. This isn't necessarily a trait unique to Trump's White House. There really hasn't been a whistleblower-friendly administration in pretty much ever, but this particular administration has been awash in leaked documents, each one prompting more severe crackdowns.But it's going to come to a head at the national security level. The "Intelligence Community" -- sixteen agencies participating and partaking in intelligence analysis and collection under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence -- is basically ousting its internal oversight. Jenna McLaughlin, writing for Foreign Policy, has the details.